Although usability playtesting is only one type of playtest, it can serve quite a few different purposes. Some of the main reasons for doing usability playtesting include:

1. Validating design decisions. To assess if specific features/systems in your game work as intended with the target audience.

2. A/B testing. To help choose between design alternatives - is the usability of Design A more effective than Design B?

3. Audience validating. Evaluating design choices with different audience types. Can both your primary and secondary audience profiles use the design as intended?

4. Exploratory testing. To make the unknown known. This is where you are not even sure which questions need asking, let’s just see what happens.

This book focuses on Reason 1 - validating design decisions.

Key takeaway

The focus of this book is to teach how to run a usability playtest where the team have specific design decisions that need assessed.

Next: 16. What is Usability Playtesting. A Vivid Description